Murder in a Minor Key (21 page)

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Archer was here this morning and went through all of Wayne’s drawers. He took away piles of papers. He wouldn’t tell me what they were, only that Wayne would want him to handle such things.”

“Did Wayne leave a will, or other instructions in the event that he died?” I asked.

“He never told me.”

“You’re entitled to ask what’s in those papers Archer took,” I told her gently. “This is your house. You shouldn’t let him take over, unless you want him to.”

“You’re right,” she said, clearing her throat. “Archer’s always tried to boss me around, even when Steve was alive.” She started to pace. “He thinks all Wayne’s things are his. But they’re not. They’re really mine, aren’t they? He doesn’ t know that Wayne was getting ready to let him go.”

“Are you sure about that?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” she nearly crowed. “Wayne was annoyed with Archer’s arrogance, always telling him what to do. He’d had it up to here.” She swiped her hand under her chin. “He was going to tell him to find another job.”

“Did Archer know this?”

“I doubt it. Wayne told me he was waiting for the right time.”

“That would have been difficult for you, too—wouldn’t it?—if Wayne had let Archer go. Archer’s been very helpful to you.”

“Oh, no, I’ve got Alberta now. She helps me when I need her.”

Archer would be very disappointed, I thought, to find out all his years of service to Clarice were valued so little. He’d obviously been high-handed this morning taking away the papers, but perhaps he wanted to spare Clarice more pain. Or if he’d sensed a change in his position in the family, he might have been afraid she’d keep information from him. Alberta had been hired as a cook. Would she have been willing to step in as social secretary and save Clarice the burden of having to make funeral arrangements?

“Let me show you Wayne’s pride and joy,” Clarice said brightly. She walked to a row of painted bookcases and withdrew a notebook with a black-and-white marbled cover, the kind I remembered using in school. “Look at this,” she said. “There must be hundreds of these.”

The notebook was written in a youthful hand. It contained a description of a concert the young Wayne had attended, who the musicians were, what instruments and songs they played, and his impressions of the quality of the performance. “Even then he was a critic,” I said, smiling as I read a few lines.

“Yes. He always kept such good records.”

I jumped at the opening. “Do you know where his notes are for the book he was planning on Little Red LeCoeur?”

“Archer asked me the same question this morning,” she said, and sighed. “I don’t know. They’re probably in his apartment somewhere. He was very secretive about whatever he was working on until it was published. Then he transcribed his notes into another of these books and added it to the collection here.”

“Didn’t he work on a computer?”

“Only when his publisher insisted. I think there’s a laptop in his apartment.”

I didn’t remember seeing one there, but I couldn’t be sure. I wondered if Archer had carted off Wayne’s papers, hoping to find his notes on Little Red among them. Was he planning to finish Wayne’s work for him? Or would he want to take the credit for himself?

“Mrs. Cruz, are you up there?” Alberta’s voice floated up the stairs from the floor below.

“Just let me see what she wants,” Clarice said, walking to the door.

“Do you mind if I look around?” I called after her.

“Help yourself,” her voice came back from the stairwell.

I walked to the bookcase that held Wayne’s notebooks and pulled out the last one on the bottom shelf. It was dated in April, and was only half full. I flipped through the pages, hoping Wayne’s propensity to keep good notes extended beyond music to other areas of his life. But if I was disappointed not to find anything personal, I was amazed at what he’d collected. There were reviews of new compact disks, features on established artists, and an analysis of why successful jazz prodigies drew the harshest criticism from his colleagues. On page after page, in Wayne’s careful script, was a collection of impressions of jazz. They ought to be in a library, I thought.

I heard Clarice’s footsteps on the stairs, and I pushed the notebook back into place. Maybe when the pain of Wayne’s death was not so sharp, she could be persuaded to part with these books. What a wonderful memorial to Wayne it would be if his cherished notebooks were made available to other lovers of music, in a public library or at a university.

“More people have arrived,” she told me. “Would you like to join us in the parlor?”

“No, thank you,” I said. “I really must go.”

“You’ve been very kind to spend so much time with me.” She fluttered her hands in front of her face as if something annoyed her. “I can’t believe I forgot to thank you. Archer told me you volunteered to bring Wayne’s clothes to the funeral home.”

“I have the bag with his clothes at my hotel,” I said. “I’m going to drop them off tomorrow morning.”

“How could I be so forgetful? You must think I’m a terrible ingrate.”

“What I think,” I said, walking with her to the stairs, “is that you have a lot to think about at the moment. I was pleased there was a way I could help.”

She turned to me. “You know, Jessica, I think we could be friends.”

Chapter Fifteen

The late set at the Café Brasilia had already started when I slipped into a chair near the back of the room. In the front, a young man in his twenties, wearing sunglasses and a Jazz Fest T-shirt under a black jacket, was playing trumpet, accompanied by three much older musicians on piano, bass, and drums. The placard on my table announced the performance of the Blind Jack Quartet, but the featured player was not the man whose concert I had attended at the festival.

I attempted to hail a passing waitress.

“Be right back,” she called out, lifting her tray high above the heads of incoming patrons as she angled her way toward the bar. She disappeared into the crowd, and I waited impatiently for her to resurface.

The quartet was playing, but people around me weren’t reacting, except to raise their voices over the music. At the table next to mine, a businessman in his fifties, his tie askew, was clinking glasses with a young woman in a tight tank top. I doubted she was his daughter. From the empty glasses on their table, I assumed they had been at the club for some time. “Excuse me,” I said, tapping the man’s shoulder.

“Hello!” he boomed, reaching out to put an arm around my shoulder. “Would you like to join us?” His nubile companion didn’t appear too pleased at his offer.

“Oh, no thank you,” I said, shifting my chair just far enough away to put me out of reach. I held up the announcement for the Blind Jack Quartet, and cocked my head toward the performers, “I came to see Blind Jack, but that young trumpet player isn’t Blind Jack.”

“He isn’t?” Had I realized how inebriated the man was, I would have buttonholed someone else.

“No, he’s not. Did they make an announcement earlier? Have I missed him?”

“Heck, I don’t know.” He turned back to his table mate. “Vera, did you hear anything?”

The young woman leaned over the table toward me, displaying a clear view of her well-developed cleavage. “Yeah. Don’t you remember, Elliott? They said he was sick or something. This guy is, like, the next generation, they said.”

“Who said?” I asked.

“That guy over there.” She pointed to two men standing under an EXIT sign. “The one in the striped shirt. I think he’s the manager.”

“Thank you,” I said, standing and pulling my bag over my shoulder.

“Hey, honey, aren’t you going to stay?” Elliott swayed in his seat, tipping in my direction.

“I’ll come back later,” I said, swerving to avoid his grasp. I circled the table and edged around several others, apologizing as I forced people to pull their chairs in to let me pass. The manager had turned down a short hall and was holding a door open to an office to let the second man enter.

I hurried after them, knocked on the door, and opened it without waiting for an invitation.

The manager looked up in surprise, and both men rose from their seats. “This is a private office, ma’am. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Yes, I’m Jessica Fletcher,” I said, crossing the room and extending my hand. “My apologies for barging in, Mr... ?”

He shook my hand. “I’m Harvey Willauer, the manager, and this is—”

“Detective Christopher Steppe,” I filled in for him.

Steppe held out his hand. “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Fletcher.”

“Oh, you two know each other,” Willauer said.

“Yes, we’ve met,” I said.

Willauer waited for an explanation, his gaze switching back and forth between us as though watching a tennis game.

I turned to the manager. “Actually, I came to see you, Mr. Willauer,” I said. “To ask why Blind Jack isn’t playing tonight. I hope nothing has happened to him.”

“You two are on the same wavelength,” Willauer said, pointing to a pink-and-green sofa. “Go ahead, sit down.”

Steppe sank down on the sofa, and I took a wooden chair catty-corner to it.

“Jack phoned me a couple of hours ago and said he couldn’t make the gig. I was pissed, of course. Oh, sorry, Mrs. Fletcher.”

“That’s all right.”

“Anyway, he came up with some lame excuse, something about personal problems. He said somebody was after him.”

“Oh?”

“So he said he was sending in this hotshot player with his regular guys. It was two hours before the show. What was I to do? I gotta have a show. I’ve got paying customers. But I’ll never offer him another gig. Unreliable, that’s what he is. And the kid. He’s not too bad, but he doesn’t have a name. This crowd only wants to listen to a name like Blind Jack. I always fill up with him. This kid doesn’t have a following.” He wound down like a spring that had slowly uncurled. “That’s all I know.”

“Do you have a phone number for Blind Jack?” I asked. “Sure, it’s in my Rolodex here,” he said, tipping his chair back to pull it off his desk.

A waitress opened the door and leaned into the room. “Willy, we got a drunk at table fifteen yelling for the manager. Cotter’s already there, but we need you, too.”

Steppe and I both stood.

“On my way.” Willauer twisted a card out of his file. “Just leave it on my desk,” he said, handing it to me as he left the room and slammed the door behind him.

I withdrew my appointment book and groped around the bottom of my bag for a pen.

“Here,” Steppe said, holding out his pencil.

I took it and jotted down the number Willauer had for Blind Jack.

“What are you doing here?” Steppe asked.

“Probably the same thing you are.”

“I’m the cop,” he said. “You’re not. Leave the investigations to the police.”

“The police aren’t investigating Wayne’s death,” I said. “I am.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You weren’t even supposed to be in his apartment,” I charged.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I checked with your lieutenant. He said the medical examiner ruled the death an accident on Saturday morning. You were in Wayne’s apartment Saturday night. The case was already considered closed by then.”

“You called the station?”

“That’s right.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Mrs. Fletcher.”

“Why?”

He slumped on the couch, and shook his head. “Because you put me in a lousy position, that’s why.”

“How? I merely called the lieutenant and asked if Wayne’s death had ever been considered a homicide. He assured me it had not, that it was a clear case of accidental death by snakebite. Although Wayne was in a dangerous area, his death was just a ‘confluence of unfortunate circumstances,’ I believe was the phrase he read to me from the report, ‘a tragic result of his being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the drought a major factor in the presence of snakes in the city.”’

Steppe took a deep breath and let it out.

“So now that I know you weren’t in Wayne’s apartment on official business, I want to know why you were there.”

He stood up and paced. “I didn’t buy it,” he said. “Neither did Teddy.”

“Buy what?”

“That accidental death garbage.”

I felt a surge of pleasure. I wasn’t alone in questioning how Wayne died. “Why not?” I asked.

“It’s just too convenient.”

“What is?”

“The drought.”

“Why?”

“Because there were too many odd elements along with it.”

“Give me an example.”

“Where his body was found,” he said. “It’s not like he took a walk in the country and stepped on a snake.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Marie Laveau’s tomb is a spot with a lot of meaning in this city.”

“And?”

“The gris-gris was another. The few people I talked to never saw Copely wearing a gris-gris. Why would he be wearing one for the first time on the night he died?”

“The gris-gris was never mentioned in the news.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t put it in the report we gave to the press.”

“Anything else bother you?”

“Yeah, the snakebite itself.”

“You don’t think he died of snakebite?”

“Oh, he died of a snakebite, all right. I’m just not so sure it was an accident.”

“Why not?”

“They use snakes in voodoo. Taken together, the whole thing looked like a setup, like a giant arrow pointing to his death as part of some voodoo ritual.”

“And it wasn’t?”

“That’s what I want to know,” he said.

“So the ME said it was an accident, but you decided to follow up anyway?”

“After we got off duty, we thought we’d take a look around Copely’s apartment to see what we could find.”

“And you found me.”

“Yeah. Teddy was reassigned yesterday to another partner, and I’ve been put on desk duty till they have another guy to pair me with. Somebody got upset with our questions Saturday morning. If they found out we’d continued the investigation against orders, we’d really be wading in quick-sand.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did you find anything in the apartment?”

“Nothing to take home to Mama, but we knew someone else had been there before us.”